Chapter 24 Growing distance and new ideas

Contrary to Oscars expectations, and hopes, he didn't immediately start to train with Chen Jin.

Flender and Shao Xin took him to the star dou forest on the same day he arrived, in their opinion it might be more dangerous and take longer than a spirit hunting forest, but the quality of the subsequent spirit ring is greater.

"How long do you think it will take until they come back?" Chen Jin asked Zhao Wuji, he had more experience in that kind of things.

Zhao Wuji looked at him and shrugged "Maybe a few days, at most two weeks, the first ring is easy to find, but Shao Xin is very picky".

Chen Jin nodded slowly.

"It seems it will still be a while until I can try my hand at being a teacher" he smiled.

"You'll have time to experience the other side" Zhao Wuji slapped his back as he said.

He turned around and went towards the the teachers quarters "See you tomorrow little monster"

When he regained his footing Chen Jin looked at the skies. It was barely past noon, it seemed he didn't want to be disturbed for the rest of the day.

Not like Chen Jin would have done it, he'd had more than enough for today.

It was a nice day, and tomorrow was going to be a weekend, so he decided to go to Soto before continuing on to Weapon Soul, he hadn't visited Bai Huo last week.

It was Monday and Chen Jin was training in the forest besides the dorms. He'd already came back from Weapon Soul the day before, in the morning.

Lately he'd noticed that some kind of wall was forming between them, or maybe it was already there and he'd never noticed because of the frequent contact.

What mattered was that after the first hour or so when they'd told each other how their week's went the conversation became somewhat stilted and awkward.

He was worried because of that. If it continued like so in a few years their distance would continue to grow and he didn't know how to take that.

The problem didn't seem to have any solution since its roots were the difference between a normal person and a spirit master, he hadn't pent as much time with Bai Yin, but when he saw her when he went to Soto everything was normal, he didn't feel any sense of distance.

He shook himself out of that train of thought, what had to be would have to be. Not everyone stayed close forever, growing apart was also a part of life.

Today he had a new idea, it wasn't for a new skill. At least not yet, for now it was going to be a control exercise.

The idea was to rapidly absorb spirit energy from his surroundings but not unto his body, he would try to control the energy in the world to gather above his hand.

The exercise had more than one use, besides increasing his control over soul power in general it would also grant him a measure of control over the surrounding spiritual power, if his control was enough he could use it to strengthen his self created soul skills, it would also increase his endurance in battle as a part of the soul power that he used would be from the world, not his.

Chen Jin already had an idea for a skill based on that ability, unfortunately he had the impression that it would take a long while to accomplish.

Since he looked a lot like Solomon from fate he'd decided to try to make a skill based on one of his moves, but it was going to be hard.

The skill he wanted to create was based on one of Solomon's three noble phantasms, Ars Almadel Salomonis.

His version being obviously both different and weaker than the original. His idea was that he made a ring of energy, and controlled it to stay above wherever he was fighting, where it would absorb spirit energy both from the air and the remnants of what was used in the fight, yhen he could use it to attack or absorb the gathered soul power to rapidly recover his reserves or another's.

It would be an extremely powerful skill, but it had quite a few problems.

Firstly it was control, control of his energy while disconnected from his body was slow going, and it was one of the requirements, he also had to be able to do it either unconsciously or find a way to fix the technique to a point while maintaining his control, otherwise it was nought but a pipe dream.

Second was purity, even if he succeeded in the first part it would only be a good as an attack, and a rather slow one too, it would take time to gather energy.

When spirit masters absorb spirit energy it goes through a whole process to make it their own, and higher leveled spirit masters soul power is generally higher in quality than the energy they absorb.

Not to say that as the technique would also absorb the remnants of the energy used in the fight it would also be a bit miscellaneous, so he also had to find a way for the skill to purify it, or using it to recover would do more harm than good.

It would be an incredibly demanding and complex skill, resuming, way out of his league at the moment. Nothing stopped him from starting to work towards it though.

The next week and a half was spent like that, working on his control and the occasional spar with Zhao Wuji.

Chen Jin wanted to start learning to control the elements, but any skill that he thought about needed him to be able to control his soul power outside his body.

The only thing that a fireball or wind blade would add to his arsenal is elemental damage and more work trying to add elements to his other skills. It was better to improve the base of his future abilities first so back to control exercises he went.

He was getting a bit tired of that.

The teachers and Oscar finally came back after more than a week. They say that teaching is a great way to make sure you yourself learned well. It was time to test that.